LAHORE: Up to 35 per cent of women doctors are unemployed in Pakistan, as revealed by a research by Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE across the country.

Basing their research on the Labour Force Survey of 2020-21, the survey analysed Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ data on the labour market, especially women medical graduates.

This survey collected data from 99,900 households across Pakistan and gave district-level representative results for the first time.

The country is facing a serious shortage of qualified doctors, with more than 36,000 women doctors either jobless or opting to remain out of the labour force for various reasons.

The survey shows that 104,974 women medical graduates are residing in Pakistan. Of them, 68,209 or 65 per cent are working at various private and state-owned medical facilities.

The country, however, has 15,619 or 14.9pc women doctors without any job, while 21,146, constituting 20.1pc of the total number, are out of the labour force, the survey shows.

According to the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has produced about 200,000 doctors, half of them being women.

The data from the Bureau of Emigration shows that around 30,000 doctors have left Pakistan since 1970, and on average, almost 1,000 are going to settle abroad every year.

Majority of these doctors studied in public universities where the government provides subsidized education.

At a time when an average private university charges medical students more than Rs5 million, the government imparts the same education to them for less than Rs1 million. This taxpayers’ money goes to waste as one in three of these women doctors are not working, the survey shows.

Almost 50,000 women doctors, on whom Rs200 billion is spent in current value, is wasted, reads the report.

PRIDE’s representative Dr Shahid Naeem says that a majority of the ‘out of labor force’ women medical graduates are married. The findings of the survey support the phenomenon of ‘doctor brides’ as widely discussed and reported in Pakistan’s context and stipulates that many families prefer their women to have medical education, as it enables them to find a more suitable match for their marriage.

The survey found that about 28pc and 72pc of medical graduates reside in rural and urban areas.

In rural regions, 52pc or more than half of Pakistan’s medical graduates are employed and 31pc are jobless. The proportion of the medical graduates who prefer to remain out of the labor force in rural areas stands lower, 17pc, than the national average of 20pc.

Urban centre data reveals that about 70pc of the graduates are employed, while less than 9pc are unemployed. The proportion of the medical graduates who choose to remain out of the labour force in Pakistan’s urban areas is more than 21pc.

The region-wise comparison shows that employment opportunities for women graduates are significantly higher, 78pc, in urban areas as compared to 22pc in rural areas.

Conversely, the proportion of the jobless is significantly higher in rural areas, 57pc, compared to 43pc in cities, according to the survey.

Regarding break-up by region, of 21,146 women medical graduates who opted to remain out of the labour force, their share in cities stands much higher at 76.6pc compared to their 23.4pc share in rural areas.

Around 76pc of those medical graduates who opted to remain out of the labour force were married.

By age group, the most frequent occurrence of women medical graduates (54pc) belongs to the 25-34 years of age.

“The analysis of the data underlines the importance of targeted policy efforts to improve employment opportunities for medical graduates, especially in rural areas where unemployment rates are higher,” says the survey.

The women medical graduates surveyed include persons who had passed the MBBS, BDS, MS/M.Sc., M.Phil. or PhD degrees in any field of medicine.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2023